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Tuesday, April 09, 2013

The Moroccan Actor Behind The Obama/Satan Controversy

The similarity between the Satan character in the wildly popular "The Bible" mini-series- which aired on The History Channel- and Barack Obama had some heads spinning. The producers- husband and wife team of Roma Downey and Mark Burnett- denied there was anything intentional about the similarity, but that didn't stop the speculation. Downey even made a statement declaring that she and hubby Mark:

“....have nothing but respect and love our president, who is a fellow Christian,” adding that “false statements such as these are just designed as a foolish distraction to try and discredit the beauty of the story of the Bible.”

So who is this Obama look-a-like? He's a Moroccan actor- Mohamen Mehdi Ouazzani, with quite a few international film credits to his name.

Ouazzani was actually quite surprised when he found out his "Satan" was being compared to Barack Obama.

“One morning somebody called me and said ‘you have to look at your email’ and I was so surprised,” Ouazzani told The Associated Press in Casablanca before jetting off to the remote desert town of Erfoud, where he's playing a police inspector in a German crime drama.

“For someone like me, a simple unknown actor, to find himself in a controversy like this - even though it’s nonsense - it makes me known around the world, so it’s something positive,” he said with a chuckle.

It all started with Glenn Beck's Tweet: “Does Satan look EXACTLY like Obama? Yes!” However, all this talk doesn't bother him at all. Ouazanni is now hoping that all this notoriety will turn into more work for him in Hollywood, and who knows, maybe a meeting with Obama himself.

“Some good has come out of this,” he said, adding with a twinkle in his eye: “Before, I knew who Obama was, and now he knows me, and if he has time I’d like to invite him and his family for couscous in Morocco.”